To ask how women did it?

[TheMurk]

Generations before, how did women do this? Manage children and households 24/7 before all the modern luxuries and distractions we have become so used to?

Having these things withdrawn over the last few months (including activities like baby classes etc) has made me think quite a lot about my grandmother, a woman raising four young children in the late 40s and 50s. My grandfather was a coalman and out all day working. Very traditional roles in that my grandmother was expected to look after everything to with the household and family while my grandfather worked and then did football or the pub when he had free time. He didn’t help her at all and she also had to do everything for him, he even cane home for his breakfast and lunch every day and expected it on the table.

So my grandmother was in the house all with 4 kids, had to do all housework, feeding, shopping, childcare etc. No car, no fancy double Pram’s or scooters to get kids around the streets for shopping, no supermarkets so multiple shops to visit to get the groceries, all cooking needed done, no convenience foods etc etc .

compared to me, I only have 2 kids and all the mod cons etc, plus a DH wfh and helping where he can, but I can barely put a slice of bread in the toaster without the baby screaming because I’ve put them down for 10 seconds, the toddler is (not ideally) occupied by TV but even that barely keeps them going. Toys are played with for minutes and discarded. Too smal for arts and crafts stuff etc.

I am finding it intense, almost unbearable, physically exhausting (not interested in the rights and wrongs of that “you shouldn’t have had kids” etc, I don’t think my grandmother’s generation made much conscious effort to think that deeply about having children, it was just what you did).

I’m interested in the practicalities of it. Did they just let the baby scream and hang of their leg while they made soup?

Did they just turn a blind eye to toddlers jumping off chairs while they did the laundry?

Did they let them roll about fighting and pulling each other’s hair because they were pressing the husbands clothes?

I can’t get any housework done at all, it’s just a constant merry go round of lifting the baby, managing the toddler, feeding them, cleaning up after feeding them, entertaining them, starting all over again.

How did they do it?

Apple if you think it was easier you could still do a lot of the things you describe the same way, especially:

"Then there wasnt any fiddling and farting around mealtimes. one meal was provided and you ate it. Now there's fussiness and food issues that we cater for. So meal planning, food shopping and cooking a variety is more of a chore back then. Not to mention catering for snacks which they didnt do."

don't fiddle and fart around then! Nobody's forcing you to! The same goes for letting your children be bored and find their own entertainement if they're past toddler age.

"I never intervened unless they drew blood"
I like her style.

Then there wasnt any fiddling and farting around mealtimes. one meal was provided and you ate it. Absolutely. It wouldn't have occurred to me to turn my nose up at anything I was given to eat.

I'm the fifth of eight children, young enough to fall under having had a modern childhood. That said, the area I grew up in must have been like s step back in time in some respects. Between us and other big, Irish Catholic families, some of the family life would have been akin to decades earlier.
Both parents worked, we spent quite a lot of time with extended family. It was expected that you would be able to entertain yourself for much of the day and would be handed over to older siblings. We didn't have a lot of the technology available at the time but neither did most people around us so it was just normal. Once you were old enough, you were expected to help out A LOT around the house, not just girls (though I know that on friend's houses, it often was just girls).
There is a picture taken of me as a baby of me sitting on the floor while dinner was being cooked. I have a saucepan, a potato and a wooden spoon and that, apparently, kept me entertained for a long time. The same applies to my siblings, I remember my youngest brother with a similar setup. We did have toys growing up but it would seem ridiculous to my parents to spend the amount people do now when you consider how good children are at making their entertainment out of nothing.

(I've tried the saucepan and potato out on my own daughter when she was a baby and can confirm that modern children are not inherently more materialistic. Potatoes are still fun for babies)

My parents are lovely people, they did the best with what they had, seemingly without ever realising quite how anachronistic our house and immediate area were- something I didn't discover until secondary school.

They didn’t have Mumsnet to suck their time away!

Omg SpokeTooSoon I just read that on my phone while I'm stood in the kitchen surrounded my mess I'm supposed to be cleaning up

For some of them;

The house was a shithole. Windows were never washed 'because the rain does that'.

Five year olds had to look after 3 and 4 year olds. In my half sister's case, as a seven year old, she fed, washed and dressed, herself, a six year old, and a four year old (who helped her look after a one year old due to the six year old's undiagnosed ASD meaning he couldn't be as much help) because 'Mum's not well' for three months, going to school by themselves and knowing they weren't allowed to say a word because Barnado's would collect them if the teachers found out. For some kids, Barnado's would pick them up aged 2-3 and they might be dropped off again once they were old enough to be self sufficient - or not.

Clothes weren't washed. If they needed to be worn on the Saturday as well as during the week, they stayed unwashed.

Babies were put into prams and ignored until the clock said it was time to feed them. Nappies took time and effort, so one of the first jobs was to train them to use a potty by an automatic reaction. By 2, if potty training wasn't successful, the children were smacked or had their noses rubbed in it if they wet the bed.

Gripe water had alcohol in it. Cough mixtures contained morphine.

Kids that didn't eat a food were either punished or left to go hungry. Breakfast would be something small and cheap - a piece of toast with margarine or some porridge - lunch would be a single sandwich, bread, a slice of ham and perhaps an orange or apple if things were a bit flush and they were in season. Copious amounts of tea and coffee were drunk - and not just by the adults, these would have more milk in them and sugar for the children. Sweets (just a few) might be available on one day a week, as was a pudding.

Older boys were sent out to play in large groups, girls were either expected to do the chores or take the toddlers/babies out with them. The children were left at home unattended so that shopping could be done as soon as one was old enough (about 5 or 6) to look after the others. If there were too many or something had happened the previous week, there was the youngest in the main part of the pram, the next one at the foot of the pram, the next sat on a special little seat in the middle of the pram and the eldest ones on reins tied to the handles of the pram. All would be left outside the shops whilst things were bought.

And come 6pm, they were all sent off to bed. Any fighting was ignored, as long as there wasn't a window being put through or the mattress set alight, whatever they did up there was their business - until just before their father got in; if they were making noise then, they would pay for it.

If a woman was feeling stressed or tired, they could go to the GP and be given 'something to help', being a tranquiliser/sleeping tablet or amphetamines. Or both, to counteract the side effects of one another.

All in all, not everybody coped. Some people were awful. We just don't talk about those ones.

Then there wasnt any fiddling and farting around mealtimes. one meal was provided and you ate it. Now there's fussiness and food issues that we cater for.

Unfortunately this would have led to deaths too. For example, children with food allergies would have died either from anaphylaxis if the allergy was severe or would have died of malnutrition. There were children who were "sickly" and "wasted away" or "faded away". A fair proportion of these will have been children with conditions such as CMPA or ARFID which existed long before we knew about them.

I enjoyed 'Can any mother help me' but it is very middle class. For a perspective on 1913 working class womens world, try Round about a Pound a week.

One of my grandmothers had the kind of experience as a mother that no one would envy. She was sent away as a teenager for 'being bad', and after my dad was born she had postnatal psychosis and was in and out of psychiatric hospitals for the rest of her life and all of my dads childhood. By 11, he would cycle 20 miles each way on his own to go to his grandparents for the weekend. She tried repeatedly to abort my aunt (there may have been other pregnancies where she succeeded as my aunt is 13 years younger) by all the tricks of gin, throwing herself down the stairs, and my aunt was sent to live with other relatives pretty much as soon as she was born.
She hated housework, and was an appalling cook. If she'd had a choice in life I don't think she would have had children and probably stayed living with a sister.

My 70s childhood is a million miles away from kids today.
I was what would be referred to as ferrel today. But it was all the kids in my neighbourhood beung treatedxsnd behaving the same. Weekends, after school and weekends we were out playing all the time. Sometimes just in our street, some times off on our bikes for whole days. No drink or picnic.
I walked myself home from school from age 4 (reception). I had 1 road to cross and then cut across 2 fields.
On the rare occasion my parents went out yo the pub we were either left in the car or put in the pubs "family room" which was usually a chaotic noisy smokey room packed full of kids. I'd be given 10p to go swimming at the local pool on my own or with friends from 6 or 7 years old. I was told to go to the library on my own on wet days in summer holidays. This was the same for most kids in my village. You'd go swimming then find half the school there, all without adults. If I took myself to the library is nearly always see a friend there alone.
We were just left to get on with it and make our own entertainment. Most my toys were second-hand. My bike had been my sister's and a neighbours before then. I had led clothes and what I had previously had been someone else's clothes were worn several days running. Bath night once or at a push twice a week.

My mum was mostly a sahm (a few part time jobs here and there). She cooked every meal from scratch, I used to help her on washing day with the twintub, we'd help with berry picking etc but our lives were just alot simpler.
I'm sure it was hard work for my mum but No way did we get bathed every night or play with our parents for hours on end.
Parenting was so h new off. Today it would be classed as child neglect I imagine.
I suppose the difference in parenting styles between then and now freed up parents for much more mundane housework and household jobs.

"Mother's helpers" have been things for generations. It certainly wasn't everyone, but one of the ways women did it was through self-medicating in various ways. My mother used them as did a lot of the women I grew up with (but then, so were quite a few men). Some enjoyed it, but for many it was something to get through and yes, standards for a lot things were lower.

Most of the stories of women in my family involve babies being carried around, even back to my great-grandmother. You tied them to you and got to work, whether out in the field or in the home (though even those who left the farm worked outside of the home, at least when the kids were in school). Even my mother, who absolutely hated babies and found pretty much everything to do with them disgusting and horrible, discussed using a papoose and made certain I had one after she was told I was pregnant with my first. The only ones I know did the timed feeding and put away was one Evangelical branch of my paternal side. They were still doing that through the early '00s though (probably still are). I actually got in trouble for changing a baby 'before it was time' once (I probably did a horrible job too, but that's what I got told off for, it wasn't time yet even though she was screeching).

Once bigger, we were expected to entertain ourselves more, though there were still some activities outside of the home. I did swimming lessons at the same place my mother and some of the generation before her did theirs and it was expected we'd do church activities or ones through the school. There weren't really non-food based activities in the home that I remember, and other activities were mainly either so adults could chat (anything sports related, mostly) or considered for pushy parents who wanted to live vicariously through their kids (like a lot of people still see pageants). It was only once secondary age, and mostly doing them on our own, that it was seen as something we were doing for ourselves.

Really, it's just very different in many places than it was. I spent most of my primary years from at least 6, probably younger, in the woods on my own, nowhere near anyone. My then-8 year old went to a park around the corner and in sight of the house by herself, and she was brought back by police because "there had been concerns..." Pros and cons to both, it would have better if there were concerns for me when I was younger, but it's rougher I think for both parents and children to be largely restricted to being together all the time (or paying for the privilege to be separate outside of school) to be 'good parenting'.

I think the fact they didn’t work as well helped!

Once the kids were old enough, they would be at school or “playing out” all day - the Mum didn’t have to constantly entertain them. Even as babies they were probably put down and left a lot.

Plus as PPs have said, the community would pitch in and help a lot, older generations, other family members, even neighbours would help as a matter of course, not a massive favour to be held over the parents’ heads.

This thread is reminding me of a podcast I listened to about how women managed their periods before modern sanpro. The historian's primary area of research was attitudes to miscarriage.

I remember her saying that atttitudes could be very different depending on your circumstances. She has found documentation from women who had 5 under 5, living in poverty, finding out they had miscarried and were frankly delighted as the last thing they wanted was another baby.

Totally different circumstances from today where most women are in a position of being in control of their fertility and actively TTC, with each miscarriage being a loss to be grieved. She was finding in some communities they were greeted as they only form of family planning available.

www.iheart.com/podcast/105-dressed-the-history-of-fas-29000690/episode/fashion-period-an-interview-with-dr-48744060/

My oldest children were born in the eighties and even back then it wasn't expected that a parent would entertain them constantly. I'd get out toys and generally expect them to entertain themselves whilst I got on with cooking and housework. They would go in the pram mid morning for a walk to the local shops, then it would be lunch, followed by nap time then it would be outside in the garden with me supervising or a walk to the local park. Then home for either some TV/video (limited TV for children then) or more toys and then dinner, bath, story, bed.
I'm not great at entertaining children tbf, their toys and games bore me. I did happily read to them though and regularly got them to help me with chores and cooking instead.

There's an expectation nowadays that children will do tap, ballet, swimming, karate, piano lessons, ice skating, horse-riding, the list is endless, and that takes up a huge amount of time. Much easier when the kids could come home from school and play in the dirt until teatime. Kids didn't spend their childhood doing non-verbal reasoning and extra maths with teachers but we still manged to produce teachers, doctors and authors - so maybe all the extra-curricular stuff is just a bit unnecessary.

My Nan had two kids a year apart in the early 60s and found it really tough- particularly two in reusable nappies and whatever the washing machines were like back then. She always commented how lucky my generation are to have such easy access to contraception.

From what she said as well her husband would work long hours but men were generally seen as entitled to down-time when they weren’t working, could relax in the pub or at home and had a bit of a ‘break’. Women just kept going non-stop.

@AnnaMagnani - ooh, thanks for that podcast! I don't know that historian and that's right in my subject area for what I'm working on atm. See, faffing around on Mumsnet is useful too!

I know that at one point, the Catholic Church didn't count abortion as a serious sin or a crime, so long as it was before the foetus 'quickened' - and they took into account the circumstances of the mother, so if a woman was very poor and struggling, there was understanding for her.

Strange how things change.

My parents would be 91 and 94 if they were still alive. My mum was one of 6, 5 girls and a boy. Her brother, the eldest, won a scholarship to grammar school and then to Oxford. The girls couldn't go to grammar school, even though they all passed their 11 plus, as my grandparents couldn't afford the uniform. My mum remembered going to school with her finger bandaged as they couldn't afford the ingredients for cookery. They all worked on the land from a young age, and left school at 14 to work.
My dad's parents had both died by the time he was 10, and he and his brother were brought up by two aunts. He and his best friend were always vying for top of the class at school (he went to grammar school), but dad had to leave at 14 and go to work. His friend, whose father was a doctor, went to Cambridge. He was always learning though, throughout his life. He learnt Welsh in his late 70s! One of his most vivid memories was walking to work past the children's clinic, and people were queued three times round the block at 8am because that was the day that polio vaccinations became available.
They gave me a wonderful childhood, and it was only when I was older that I realised how hard their own childhoods had been.

@TheMurk

Also the poster who mentioned 4 kids on the train and leaving the baby with someone to take a child to the toilet... these are the kinds of logistical things that I find really stressful and I only have 2. Like you say back in a time when you could trust the people around you and everyone looked out for each other, it seems a much more obvious way to live. Our society has become too big to allow this now. Back then you probably knew most of the people on the train by name!

That was me! I don't think it was a question of knowing people, just that you trusted everyone by default and mostly (not always) that worked. Nowadays the default setting is "don't trust anyone" which is sad but also pretty exhausting for parents, mums in particular. The flipside of this is that no-one is allowed to tell anyone else's child off anymore (or sometimes even speak to them).

Oh, and when my grandfather died when my dad was 10, it was proposed that Barnardos send him to Australia. It was only 2 aunts coming from abroad to bring him up that prevented that.

Lots of children was considered unseemly and common, something associated with the lower classes who couldn't control themselves. As I posted earlier about my neighbour, after she had baby number four their GP very firmly told her husband that enough was enough and he had to stop "bothering" her.

OH THANK YOU so much for the "Can Any Mother Help Me?" recommendation. Years ago I saw a TV programme about the letters and didn't write down the name, and never managed to successfully google it. Brilliant to know it's a book!

Nowadays the default setting is "don't trust anyone" which is sad but also pretty exhausting for parents, mums in particular. The flipside of this is that no-one is allowed to tell anyone else's child off anymore (or sometimes even speak to them)

It is very sad nowadays. I remember sitting in a playground on a bench feeding my newborn whilst my toddler played. My toddler tripped up and fell and another mum went to help him. I was very grateful but when she saw me coming over she looked petrified and apologised profusely for helping my ds get up. I told her it was absolutely fine and thanked her for helping of course.

Another situation I remember when I was pregnant and on a train. I was stood at the doors waiting to get off. A dad and his toddler were in front of me. The dad got off first and was sorting his bags out whilst his toddler stood on the train right by the doors getting closer and closer to looking like he would fall off into the gap. I knelt down and put my arm in front of the child and said "wait for your daddy sweetheart" because I couldn't bear to see this child fall into the gap. The dad turned round and gave me a filthy look. I don't know what I should have done. Just watched a terrible accident happen because thats preferable to interacting with a stranger's child

Firstly , we had many siblings and cousins around so we basically entertained each other all day long. Now, families are much smaller and dont grow up together so we have to keep our kids stimulated and occupied all the time. Not to mention the older kids had the responsibility of taking care of the younger ones. So 'childcare' back then was much, much easier. You do realise that not everyone had many siblings and cousins? I'm beginning to wonder if people used to have a first or second child, they all seemed to have older children around to bring the young one up so I can only assume the older ones all arrived old enough to do that.

I'm sure my late MIL was helped by the eldest when she was 10 or 11 but when she was 4 and mum had a 3 year old, a 2 year old, a 1 year old and brand new baby? Of course within 2 or 3 months she'd be pregnant and coping with that as well. Yes at 4 she probably cooked a roast, did the washing and entertained the others, maybe the 3 year old helped out. This was in the 1940s.

MIL had little help, her mother was dead, her sister lived in another city so very little help and yes I'm pretty sure it was hard.

@MrsTannyFickler Sounds like my childhood too! I think some of the blame for the changes has to also go to our compensation culture and risk avoidance. For instance, I don't want to be a helicopter parent and I was happy for my nine year old to walk to and from his (very close) school on his own. The school refused to let him walk home, even with my permission. For a while he walked to school on his own and then someone ratted on me and I was told I had to accompany him!

@AnnaMagnani That podcast looks great. (Love the user name!)

Washing was done once a week (Monday was washday! Can you imagine?), clean clothes dispensed once a week also (men's shirts actually had detachable collars so they could wear a clean collar with a not quite so clean shirt...) and Saturday evening was bath night (face, neck and knees scrubbed every day).
Children were also out of the house most of the time, older ones looking after younger ones.

Newborns would sleep in a pram outside with older siblings (who weren't much older) looking after them whilst mum cooked and cleaned.
Children played on the street and it wasn't frowned upon to leave your children at home whilst you did the daily shopping.
Children would get a smack if you misbehaved and that would be from anyone; teacher, neighbour etc and women's lives were dictated by the head of the house, so everyone would just toe the line/suck it up.